Group opposes bill limiting 'voluminous' FOIA requests

Sunday

Jun 22, 2014 at 6:39 PMJun 22, 2014 at 6:59 PM

Doug Finke of Gatehouse Media Illinois

SPRINGFIELD — A bill rushed through the closing days of the General Assembly’s spring session is drawing the ire of a good-government group that contends it will restrict the ability of citizens to get information about their governments.

Supporters, though, said the bill is a way to help municipalities deal with a comparative handful of people who file excessive requests under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, tying up employees who could better be used doing other work.

“It was intended to fix maybe an unintended consequence of people abusing the FOIA,” said Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, who drafted the bill. “It’s not intended to hide information from people.”

Rep. Rich Brauer, R-Petersburg, voted in favor of the bill.

“You talk to any state agency, municipalities, a lot of time is just spent on people that are making these just huge requests for information,” Brauer said. “It doesn’t affect the media, it doesn’t affect nonprofits. It’s just for the people who are abusing that right.”

However, Andy Shaw, president and CEO of the Better Government Association, disagrees.

“This is an annual dance that municipalities play to get out from under the legitimate need to provide citizens with information,” Shaw said. “Municipalities don’t like taking a lot of time complying with FOIA. They have been trying from day one to find ways around full compliance. This is the latest iteration.”

Shaw has sent a letter to Gov. Pat Quinn urging him to veto the bill. In the letter, Shaw said the bill is “rife with technical problems and confusing language.” The bill also contains new fees for records produced in electronic form.

“The proposed prices outlined in this legislation are onerous and bear no apparent relation to the real and much lower cost of producing electronic records,” Shaw said in the letter.

Finally, Shaw noted that the stated intent of the bill is to cut down on “frivolous and spiteful FOIA requests,” although it doesn’t explain what those are or provide evidence of how widespread the supposed problem is.

“We actually do hear from quite a few (municipalities),” said Joe Schatteman, who handles FOIA issues for the Illinois Municipal League, which supported the bill.

“There was a central Illinois community that came to our office, and they brought this volume of requests that this one person had,” said Schatteman, who also is a Chatham village trustee. “It was a community that had two staff people. In order for them to fill these FOIA requests, they had to pay these two staff people overtime. The other portion of their job duties went unfulfilled for two or three weeks. When it gets to a point of disruption of government services for the general good, that’s when we have concerns.”

Rita said he is trying to address a problem faced by Tinley Park, a city in his House district.

“They get an enormous amount of requests in for enormous amounts of data or information through electronic format,” Rita said. Current FOIA law does not allow cities to charge fees for information delivered in electronic format.

“I’ve seen some of the requests,” Rita said. “It’s like give me every email between Employee A and Employee B and Employee C for the last four years. They’ve had some real issues with the same person continuously asking for enormous amounts of information.”

The bill defines a “voluminous requester” of information under FOIA. For example, more than five requests in a period of 20 business days or a request that requires compilation of more than 500 pages of material is considered voluminous. The news media, nonprofits and academic organizations are exempt.

The bill also sets out a fee structure for electronic documents and says a municipality can require the fees be paid in advance.

Shaw said the fees can total up to $100.

“The fees are arbitrary and unreasonably high, which seriously undermines the ability of regular citizens to access the public information they’re entitled to,” Shaw said in a recent newspaper column.

Shaw is not defending the idea of filing frivolous FOIA requests.

“Filing voluminous FOIA requests for frivolous reasons is wrong,” he said. “But it’s equally problematic when public officials start judging which FOIAs are legitimate and which aren’t and which people have a right to file them and which don’t. I’d rather err on the side of too many people filing too many FOIAs than give public officials increased power to limit the flow of information.”

Shaw said a possible solution would be for the attorney general’s office to get involved.

“The attorney general is responsible for the enforcement of FOIA,” he said. “The attorney general’s FOIA department could just as easily referee claims of excessive filings and make determinations.”